Just making it up as I go along…

Week 10 – Stormy Night

We followed straight on from the carnage of last week with the adventurers battling the last of the warforged assassins. Quilynn the cleric and the druids found themselves fighting a rearguard action against the raiders approaching from the engine, while the party warriors worked their way back up after defeating the main invasion force. Meanwhile, Lucan continued his flight into the woods along a dried out riverbed.

Having defeated their assassins, the adventurers gambled that the halfling outriders were mercenaries and threw their assailants’ bodies out of the end carriage. The gamble paid off, and the glidewings were seen flitting away into the gathering storm clouds. Leaving the House Orien guards to gather the surviving passengers and call for help, they took a few moments to regroup before heading into the woods.

The druids quickly spotted signs of Lucan’s passing in the mud, leading straight towards a ruined ziggurat past the forest, so Keil shifted for a burst of speed and ran ahead. Heavy rain was beginning to fall, a storm sweeping in from the plains, so he was keen to track Lucan before the traces were erased. Unfortunately he ran into a bunch of ogre zombies that were clawing their way out of the mud and he was brutally clubbed to the ground. A sudden flare of magic within the armour he had inherited from his father was all that spared his life.

His cry of dismay as he fell brought the rest of the party running. Koff leapt into the fray while Blumperklart shielded Keil and stabilised him. Ruin summoned lightning from the storm above, but the creatures kept coming. The zombie ogres were slow, but when they hit, they were devastating foes. They were also highly resistant to Quilynn’s attempts to turn them. Fortunately Koff was even more lethal, spinning between the hulking forms, cleaving through with a series of critical hits just when needed. Between them the two warriors cut the undead down, their blades seeming to wake to new life in the epic battle.

A more cautious scouting ahead revealed the wreckage of a cart and the dead bodies of two of the adventurers that they had met earlier in the day. No sooner had they reached them than the bodies rose as newly created vampire spawn having recently been slain by Lucan as he fled this way. This time, Quilynn’s turning was effective, and the vampire spawn fled into the trees. Ahead of the party, the ziggurat waited in a lake while the dried out river began to refill, and a flicker of motion could be seen as someone, or something moved into the ruin’s depths.